EMBA Speakers

Amber Wendover

 
With 25 years of strategic and operational experience, Amber has collaborated with industry leaders such as Microsoft, Amazon, Whole Foods Market, Boeing, Nike, Intel, Google, and eBay.

Her expertise extends to premier children’s hospitals, mid-sized companies, and nonprofits. Amber specializes in evaluating, developing, and implementing talent development solutions, including product training, competency development, leadership frameworks, talent reviews, and succession planning strategies. She is highly regarded as a facilitator, speaker, coach, and trainer, having impacted nearly a million individuals globally. Residing in Seattle, WA, Amber is married to her college sweetheart, both WSU alum and mother of two college-aged children. Outside of work, you’ll often find her immersed in a book or diligently working on her debut book, accompanied by a comforting latte and an energetic puppy by her feet.

Leanne Gallagher

 
Leanne’s curiosity for peak performance and helping individuals, teams, and leaders be at their best provides her clients insight and clarity to apply to their workplace, families, friendships, and communities.

With a career of over three decades, she has worked as a Leadership Development Consultant at Microsoft and now Leanne partners with learning and development organizations, globally, spanning several industries. She creates effective learning environments that carve out time and space to address anything getting in the way of intent and impact. Drawing from her experience crafting growth and learning experiences for personal and cultural transformation, Leanne has also become the go-to event planner for her family and friends. Leanne lives in Spokane, WA with her husband and loves every chance she gets to spend time with her adult-children and sneaking time near water every chance she has.

Holly Connely – Moderator

Career Consultant,
Graduate and Online Programs CCB

Holly Connley is a Career Consultant for the Carson College of Business serving MBA and EMBA students. Holly has vast experience helping students from all walks of life as they navigate their career journey, including industry pivots, career changes and military-to-civilian transitions. She has a Master’s Degree from New Mexico Highlands University in Educational Leadership and has assisted with the creation of several professional development programs in the higher education space.

Karl Mecklenburg

Executive Recruiter
Blue Mountain Recruiting, LLC

Karl Mecklenburg is an executive recruiter for the commercial banking industry. He has been with Blue Mountain Recruiting in Tacoma since 2017. Prior to Blue Mountain, Mecklenburg worked in recruitment for Bank of America, Combined Insurance and Wyndham. He has worked as both a corporate Recruiter and manager as well as running his own agency previously. His specializations have been in banking, mortgage and insurance. His previous business to business sales and consultation career gives him a total of nearly 30 years of experience in managing client relationship and consulting businesses. Karl has a deep pool of talent he has developed relationships with throughout the United States. He resides in both Washington State and New Mexico. Karl is a Veteran of the U.S. Air Force and has a BA from The Evergreen State College.

Jerry Leighton

St Executive Recruiter
Providence St Joseph Health

Jerry Leighton is a senior executive recruiter/talent acquisition specialist at Providence St. Joseph Health. He executes targeted searches seeking out high tech professionals and executives primarily in the Clinical Leadership, Business Intelligence (BI) and Epic space. He works on the Healthcare Intelligence team recruiting employees who are utilizing metadata and predictive analytics to accomplish great things for humanity. Prior to Providence St. Joseph Health Jerry was a technical Recruiter for Urgenci, LG Consulting, and Hall Kinion. He hold a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and International Sales and Marketing from Central Washington University.

Crista Stenson-Blood

Principal Executive Recruiter
Alaska Airlines

Crista Stenson-Blood is a principal executive recruiter for Alaska Airlines. Before coming to Alaska Airlines Crista was a senior executive recruiter for Boeing. She hold a BA in Human Resources from the Carson College of Business.

Debbie Compeau

Interim Dean
Carson College of Business

Deborah (Debbie) Compeau is the Interim Dean of the Carson College of Business and Research and the Hubman Distinguished Professor of Information Systems. Prior to joining WSU, she held faculty positions in Canada at The University of Western Ontario (2000-2015), University of Calgary (1998-2000) and Carleton University (1991-1998). Her research focuses on the interaction between people and information technologies (IT) in organizations. Her specific interests include user training and learning and the adoption and implementation of IT. Recent projects have focused on adoption of IT in healthcare settings. Her research has been published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, and the European Journal of Information Systems as well as other journals. She was named as a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems in 2018. She served as Associate Editor for Information Systems Research (2000-2002) and as Associate and then Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly (1998-2005). She has taught information systems at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, with a particular focus on IT strategy. She is an active case writer and case teacher and has conducted workshops on teaching with cases in the U.S., Canada, France, and Germany.

Tom Tripp

Sr. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs
Carson College of Business

Dr. Tripp is Professor of Management, Rom Markin Endowed Leadership Chair in Business, and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Carson College of Business at Washington State University. He previously taught at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and at the Sauder School of Business at University of British Columbia. Dr. Tripp teaches courses on leadership, negotiation skills, and decision-making. His research focuses on the psychology of workplace conflict, and has been published journals including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Annals, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Marketing. He is co-author of the 2009 book, Getting Even: The Truth About Workplace Revenge – and How to Stop It. Dr. Tripp has earned over a dozen awards in research and in teaching, including the Most Influential Paper award from the Conflict Management Division of the Academy of Management, and the university-wide Sahlin Faculty Award for Excellence in Instruction from WSU. Tripp earned a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Washington.

Cheryl Oliver

Associate Dean for Professional Programs
Carson College of Business

Cheryl Oliver brings over three decades of experience in higher education and business administration. Her strategic vision and commitment to fostering educational excellence have been instrumental in shaping professional programs in the Carson College of Business at WSU; programs consistently ranked as some of the top in the country. As a commissioner for Pullman Regional Hospital, Cheryl leverages her extensive background to contribute to the hospital’s governance and community health initiatives. Her leadership roles extend to serving on the WSU Global Campus Academic Council and the Women in Business Education International Network, reflecting her dedication to advancing educational and healthcare standards.

Andy Perkins

Chair of Marketing and International Business
Carson College of Business

Dr. Andrew Perkins is an associate professor of Marketing and International Business. Dr. Perkins’ research explores numerous facets of what is generally termed Implicit Social Cognition, broadly defined as the cognitive processes that affect our behavior but are unavailable to introspection by consumers and not directly observable by researchers. Within the general domain of Implicit Social Cognition, Dr. Perkins examines the cognitive and behavioral effects of linking new or novel objects to the consumer self-concept, how the metaphorical relationship between psychological and physical experience affects behavior, and how implicit, or unconscious, attitudes and cognitive processes affect perceptions of race, gender, and nationality. Dr. Perkins has published numerous articles in top Marketing journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Management. Dr. Perkins is also the director of the Center for Behavioral Business Research (CBBR). The mission of the CBBR is to bring together industry leaders, academics, and students for the study of various behavioral issues relevant to business, consumers and broader society.